The Reserve Bank of India has slapped a penalty of Rs 3.06 crore on Amazon Pay India Pvt Ltd – the payments arm of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon. The RBI has charged that Amazon Pay India was non-compliant with the regulator’s KYC (Know Your Customer) rules, and provisions regarding PPIs (Prepaid Payment Instruments). “It was observed that the entity was non-compliant with the directions issued by RBI on KYC requirements,” the RBI said in a statement.
However, RBI also clarified that the penalty levied on Amazon Pay India is not related to the firm’s transactions with its customers. “This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the entity with its customers,” RBI said in the statement. Earlier, the central bank had issued a show cause notice to Amazon Pay (India), asking it to explain why the firm should not be penalised for non-compliance with the directions. “After considering the entity’s response, RBI concluded that the aforesaid charge of non-compliance with RBI directions was substantiated and warranted imposition of monetary penalty,” it said. Amazon Pay is the digital payment arm of Amazon.
India has logged 23.06 billion digital transactions worth Rs 38.3 lakh crore in the third quarter of FY23, stated a report by Worldline India. Digital transactions include payments by Unified Payments Interface (UPI), debit and credit cards, prepaid payment instruments like mobile wallets, and prepaid cards. The UPI related transactions, meanwhile, has clocked over 19.65 billion transactions in volume and Rs 32.5 lakh crore in terms of value, said the report.
Recently, billionaire Bill Gates too praised India’s ‘great’ digital network, reliable and low-cost connectivity, and said this will be the cheapest 5G market. Under the G20 presidency of India, Bill Gates talked about India’s digital identity Aadhaar, its payment infrastructure, and rapid strides that the country has taken in bringing more people into the formal banking system.
